The homework was like a weight on his mind, unwelcome.
Where did it come from? Too much even. He did not want it. Unnecessary, a burden. His future depended on it.
Why? That was his only motivation. Don't you see him? He would actually try and it would take him all day. He worked into the night, not enough sleep.
Somehow, despite his extraordinary effort, his grades were less than ideal, and he was intelligent, too. It is as Tolstoy wrote, that the dullest people are the best students. He was a lively young man, always looking around him for something to take interest in. School bored him, but, more than that, it sweated and threatened him.
“Your friend is here,” said an assistant.
“You can sit there.” The principal opened his hand at seats by the window.
“Good day,” said his guest from the school district.
“Chocolate bar and carrot juice?” asked the principal.
“Sure.”
He stepped into a kitchen with piles of food on the counters and returned swiftly. Relieving themselves of the more serious thoughts, they smoked, laughed, ate and talked about everything. They were both full and optimistic by the time the official specifically asked Mr. White, this principal, about the school.
“I'm working on it.”
“There's been an important change at the district, with the curriculum.”
“What is it?”
“We are rolling out a new special digital curriculum. You can just let us know if your teachers are interested.”
“Of course you are.”
“It'll help them.”
“I'll take a look at it, but I doubt anyone will be interested.”
“Let's make cookies!”
“I don't want to,” said a student, “what if I don't want to? Isn't that the patriarchy, forcing me to bake?”
“I agree,” said another student.
This interested the teacher.
“Don't worry about your grade then” the teacher said.
The feminist got up and left, without touching her handout, and the teacher was pleased by the philosophical interruption. The student pondered how anyone could make any sense out of it. Why would someone force her to bake, read or write, run or sit.
The principal had begun wearing a comfortable robe instead of a suit. He was visiting the physics class, walking calmly and gently, his head tilted down slightly, profoundly meditating.
“What are you doing in the hallway?” he asked a student out by the classroom door. The physics class was the only one in the portable.
“I was staring out the window, the teacher noticed, and he said I should wait outside then.”
“There's no way you'll succeed without being interested. One moment,” stepping inside, and concluded upon returning: “Well, it's like you said. You're free until your next class. It would help if you were interested. Right?”
The principal stepped outside, and so did the student, who was friends with the feminist and saw her leaving the school.
“Where are you going?” he asked her.
“Home early to eat and make a smoothie. Want to come?”
“Sure.”
“Are you ahead in all your classes? Why were you out with the principal?”
“I didn't like physics. I was excused. You?”
“I didn't want to bake for home ec” she replied seriously.
It was a large property, with trees all around, at the end of a cul-de-sac without sidewalks. The sun was shining brightly in the fresh blue sky, and the door was open.
“What do you think about meat?” as she prepared vegan burgers.
“I haven't thought about it, I've always eaten it. Don't we need it? What do you think about it?”
“I'm writing an article about it for the student paper actually. My mom told me she knew someone with a tooth problem who got a headache whenever he ate meat, and nothing else did that, so he stopped eating meat.”
“How do you stay full?”
“I eat a lot of healthy avocados.”
“What else do you think about?”
“My mom! Here she is ...”
“Shouldn't you both be in class?” she asked.
“I was excused.”
“Me too,” said the feminist.
“Well that's fine then. Talking about all that eh, ha, here have some strawberries.”
“I was going to make a smoothie,” she said.
“Good good,” said her mother.
“It was a teacher's idea, a school paper, but not necessarily news.”
“Interesting.”
“I don't eat animals, and our friend, the authority at the cafeteria, stopped serving animals, so I'm defending the decision essentially.”
“What about the witch hunts” asked a student.
Miss Dream was the teacher. Her expression was not tainted by any objections or restraints. She knew why she was there.
“They killed people for being healthy,” she says. “It's as horrible as the idea of an evil eye, someone giving you a look, which means nothing and could even have nothing to do with you."
“Give me more homework,” a laughing student said.
“Should I memorize any of this?” asked another.
“I don't think that'll be necessary,” replied Dream.
“What are you doing?” Mr. White entered the classroom.
“Talking.”
“We need more music, more writing, more theatre. It's all wrong. And don't grade them,” he said.
“All homework is now optional,” said Dream immediately.
“He's writing something over there in the corner, so that would be better,” said the principal.
“It'll be a conversation then, like a good book. Let's discuss Nazi Germany.”
“Why?” asked a student.
“So he just killed people?” asked another?
“He killed and deceived,” Someone else said.
“Hitler was fake,” said Dream.
“I don't care about him. There's not enough trees.”
In the main hall.
“Can I talk to you please?” It was an education official. A woman in a dress.
“Who are you?” asked the student.
“You have to be here ... follow me.”
She led him around the corner to a small room without windows. There was a chair in the corner.
“Sit down. Do you know why you're here?”
“I dunno.”
“Did you have permission to miss class?”
“I had to finish homework.”
“Which homework?”
“The class I missed.”
“You skip all your classes. I have your record here. What if you miss something? What are you doing?”
“I'm not sleeping enough.”
“Why?”
“Homework.”
“You're the only one with that problem. Why is that? Don't you like the butts? You're the only one.”
“I'm tired.”
“Is that an opinion? Do you like honey? You want to be here, do you deny that? Have you had your body done?”
“No ...”
“What about your teeth?”
“No ...”
“Look at my hair ...” It was orange.
“Why am I here. I'm just tired ...”
“Do you like rainbows?”
“Why?”
“You're hiding something ... I can tell ...”
“I just tried to get grades.”
“Do you think you're funny? Don't you know why you're here? Do you know who I am? I'm testing you.”
“To prepare for a job?”
“What would you do without homework? We're fake here, do you have a problem with that? ... Have you considered poetry or drawing?”
“I'm just tired.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“What are you talking about ...”
“Look at my dress. You need to attend classes, all of them. There's too much advertising. That's all, you're free to go.”
She did not tell anyone she was coming and she left without another word.
The park space by the school became a continuous festival. Everyone was eating and there was a play as they listened to a beautiful duduk.
“There are fish in that stream!”
Someone was pitching some smooth pebbles.
“Wouldn't they know that I'm throwing them? Are you saying fish don't think?”
“You're blocking the stream, what difference does that make?”
“I'm not here all day ... they'd have to be thoughtless ...”
“It's not respectful.”
“Are the cars driving all around us disrespectful, with the exhaust and noise?”
“What are you two arguing about? I'm a police officer. I'll decide who's wrong.”
“Fish and cars ... not fish and chips.”
“What about them?”
“Are the cars on the roads like pebbles thrown into a fishy stream?”
“What is a fish?” The officer perked his eyebrows amusingly, and that was the end. The audience burst with laughter and a naked woman danced laughingly while sprinkling herbs along her merry way across a stage.
Then the woman with the herbs was singing:
“A song from a bird comes freely just for you,
A fruity party, not there, with the cloudy moon.
Music for all you see but nowhere to go,
Blossom beautif'ly but wouldn't let it grow.
A warm and nutty swirl.
So free, so like a squirrel.
My good soul lovely meets,
To eat the sunny sweets.
A way for the moon,
Rainbow with a loon.
Walls divide your mind,
Now its lost to find.”
An assembly with a very important visiting doctor:
“How do you all feel today? What a beautiful day! Wow, that sun shining, makes me want to go for a checkup. You can see my colleagues over there to check your head for lice. Allow me to remind you of the food pyramid. What you should be eating. Less salt. So important. Less sugar, less calories, less fat, less carbs, less food actually, that's a really good idea. Fibre. You're going to want all of that fibre, just get some cereal, and I recommend low-fat milk, or no milk. Awesome. Lots of veggies, and some meat. You know, it's so amazing that we're here, this was so unlikely, there was hardly any chance of it all happening this way, but it did. Wow, it's like Goldilocks! I don't even know why we're here. It was just so much dust and it all just came together, it's unbelievable. There are so many stars, it makes me feel so little ... I don't know why. And all we needed was electricity and some soup. ... I'm so sad about religion, I don't know what to do, but I do love wine ... and milk, ha ha, the milky way is interesting, ha ha ...”
A gypsy fiddler began playing very intricately and joyfully just outside the auditorium. The principal was there and said not to mind.
“He'll be doing that,” he announced neutrally.
“Milk is murder!” someone yelled suddenly.
“Stop killing babies!” yelled someone else.
“Earth is flat!”, and then a woman laughed.
The doctor tried to regain their attention through the music, which was decent.
“Is the milky way murdering babies? Is that the position of this audience? Hahaha!”
“Stop bombing people”, as if the doctor had any authority.
“Well, the universe is flat, like a pancake, of course,” said the doctor, attempting desperately not to appear like the enemy he actually was.
Someone broke a window outside, with a rock. The principal left the auditorium to go check on it and, returning, not a word. The doctor continued:
“We're all so happy to be here, it's such a vibrant and excellent place and we all enjoy being here. The grading is so important, and we know that is the reason why we are here, and how beautiful is that? Marx made class seem like a bad thing. You need the highest grades possible, that's a law of nature just extended out of Darwin's philosophy. And some people are upset, so what? Our extraordinary beginning came out of nothing. This happened billions and billions of years ago, in the middle of nowhere, for no reason. Why? You need science to figure that out, and, yes, that is the new religion. You'll need to figure that one out for yourself.” He chuckled. “See, that's funny if you're scientifically literate. I'm still looking for the answer myself, along with millions upon millions of other people. I base my beliefs on the information and the process that we call science. It fills me with joy to know that we can pursue these answers. You and I are somehow at least one of the ways that the universe knows itself, you and I are a product of the universe, we are nothing and everything. It's astonishing. I see your faces, I know, yes, we have come to be because of the universe's existence, and we are driven to pursue that, to find out where we came from, and the second question I think we all want to know ... are we alone?”
“The school system was wrong and we had to change. There's a community now and it grew from here. There was no community, there was no society. We changed that. We're talking to each other, and not to judge, not to memorize, not to grade, but to grow, discover what we would like to do, not to impose what is already done. We inquire into our sacred emotions, freely, to decide authentically what we would like to talk about or work on, and so everyone is interested and teachers are no longer cogs in a machine but active participants in society, not merely doing what someone else told them to do. You don't need to complete an endless rigmarole of assignments, so write a play, write poetically, write a song, a short story, paint, grow, seeds, words, and we'll keep it here and share together. The teachers have a conversation, about what you're thinking about, and that's the curriculum. You can merely guide, if you will, along with everything else.” These were the words of the principal to one of the teachers.
A man was visiting the principal to learn about who he was. The classes were dialogues, food was bountiful, even free, and there was a genuine community, music all the time, plays, the printing press was a golden rule and freedom of expression reigned it seemed like the whole land. He was interested in his soul. He had woken up one morning and realized he was somewhere else and was wondering how. There was only freedom when it came to the school or anything having to do with it, everywhere else was the old world.
“How did you do it?”
“I chose freedom, every single time” said the principal.
“I'd like to change classes please.”
“You can't.”
“I really should.”
“Why, you have all the best classes here.”
“He wanted me to draw and colour a poster to summarize a textbook.”
“You can drop out if you feel that way.”
“Why not just change classes.”
“I'm afraid that's impossible.”
“Whatever.”
- Elias Ishak, Burnaby
You can find Elias Ishak on YouTube.
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